In recent years, size-reducing, thinning, weight-reducing, and multi-functioning of various electric/electronic apparatuses have rapidly advanced, and, in particular, in the fields of mobile phones, flat panel displays, and various mobile apparatuses, the competition over thinning between companies is intense. Such a trend, of course, increases a demand for size-reducing/thinning of various electric/electronic parts mounted on circuit boards installed in these electric/electronic apparatuses.
Further, a connector that relays electrical connection between circuit parts is also required to be reduced in size and thinned, and, in terms of the connector, size-reducing thereof can be made by achieving a narrow pitch (space saving) between connector terminals, and thinning thereof can be achieved by reducing the height of a connecting portion.
A female connector and a male connector, particularly, the female connector is conventionally manufactured by performing punching work using a die to a metal plate material. However, in the case of a connector structure in which the female connector and the male connector manufactured by this method were connected to each other, it was very difficult to reduce the height of a connecting portion to 1.0 mm or less, and narrow a pitch between terminals to 0.5 mm or less.
Further, in such a conventional manufacturing method, with further size reduction and thinning of connectors to be manufactured, there is such a problem that product failures occur frequently, assembling workability is poor, mounting failure occurs when it is mounted on a circuit board by soldering, and therefore disconnection of the female connector and the male connector from each other occurs between connector connecting portions on impact at an assembling time of an apparatus.
In order to solve such a problem, a connector structure in which a flexible circuit board was used and in which a female connector and a male connector manufactured by using plating technique and photolithography technique were assembled to each other was developed (see Patent Literature 1).
In this connector structure, a female connector and a male connector can be repeatedly attached to and detached from each other, the height of a connecting portion between the female connector and the male connector can easily be reduced to 0.5 mm or less, and a pitch between terminals can be narrowed to 0.5 mm or less, so that the connector structure can be said to be excellent in height reduction and space saving.    Patent Literature 1: Japanese Patent No. 4059522